Today's Encounter with Academic Imperialism

my african women writers class today was awful. i was keeping count, and
over 50% of the discussion was white women making horrible inappropriate comments, like how african societies need to not separate women from men because it would
lead to greater understanding so that we don't need feminist literature.
It pisses me off because it is not our class. it is not our place to come in and think that we need to "educate" the africans "living in patriarchy!" we should not be talking in class unless we are specifically asked to, unless our viewpoints and opinions are asked. we should be listening and learning. if whitepeople are always talking in class it is another form of academic imperialism where we are coming in and saying "this is what you should believe." That is unacceptable and innappropriate because weare not here to teach, we are here to learn because whatever we think we know, it's from our white privileged western background and we need to shut up and listen to what the tanzanian students are thinking and
interpreting in the work.

For another thing, feminism, feminist theory from western countries is not the same as Tanzanian feminism, African feminism, Middle Eastern feminism, South American feminism. It's different. We cannot come in and impose our feminist theories because that is not the point of feminism, and in fact is contrary to the idea of liberation. If we want women to be liberated, we do not go around telling them that this method will fix everything, because that is just another instance of someone else coming in saying "this is how to run your life" and that doesn't change anything. The change, the theory needs to come from the people of each context.